


It's Only Existence

by GettheSalt



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Post Episode: s03e04 Devils You Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5082223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettheSalt/pseuds/GettheSalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't a happy existence. Truth be told, she isn't sure if it is existence at all. The only awareness she has of the passage of time is what she watches go by in the life of someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Only Existence

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday gift for my dear Lou. As is the standard that she's come to assume with me, here is some pain.

This isn't a happy existence. Truth be told, she isn't sure if it is existence at all. The only awareness she has of the passage of time is what she watches go by in the life of someone else.  


If it wasn't for watching, she wouldn't have any idea of how much time as passed. If you don't know how much time has passed, and when, is that truly existing? If you are outside of everything, do you truly exist within the confines of anything?  


These are the things she thinks about while she watches a dark room. A dark room with a gun at the bedside, a knife under the pillow. Sheets thrown haphazardly, the semblance of covering. Listening to shallow breaths. Rest doesn't come easy any more. It's been months, and rest still doesn't come easy. She's beginning to wonder if it ever will. 

She can't continue to watch this pain. It's never what she wanted.

But she can't turn away.

The only solace she can find - if it can even be called that - is with him.

He's just as lost as she is. Just as outside of existence, just as lost to the passage of time.

Except when he watches the earth shake, and the air tremor.

"It's not easy." He says to her. It's still night, in the corner of the world that she watches, but here, the sun is new breaking. She had to take a leave from it. Couldn't watch another attempt at peace end in failure. Not tonight.

"Too bad no one told us that before we signed up for this."

That makes him laugh, and even though there is no mistaking the bitter edge, when he looks her way, his face is split in a grin, one that radiates warmth, even while everything is cold.

It’s always so cold. She’s always so cold.

"How are things on your end?" He asks, after they stand in silence for a while. People are moving around them, bustling, hurrying from here, to there. To places and things that seem so unimportant to her. She catches a flash of gold and averts her eyes, looking hard at the concrete floor.

"Still not sleeping, not really. Healing. Always does."

He nods, folding his arms, and though she can't see him, she can feel his eyes on her profile. 

"That was always kind of amazing. Like a tank. Nothing could stop him. Not for long, anyway."

She knows that he knew him, before. That, under flimsier circumstances, they were friends. He was there, when everything started for them. Down, below their feet. He knows what she does, who she goes to see. Knew him long before she did, and has watched him, too. 

It's not the same as her watch, but she doesn't resent him for it. Doesn't chase him off when he arrives.

"What about here?" She asks. Because it's polite, and because, on some level, she really does want to know. It doesn't do her any good, not anymore, to be a fly on the wall, but it's still things she wants to know. Still movements and decisions that will inevitably bounce back on _him_.

"Shady new organization has hitched their cart to SHIELD's horse." He says, and manages to only sound a _little_ exasperated. "This one is backed by the government. Publicly, though. Not like SHIELD before the fall." A pair passes them, and she feels a pang of recognition. One of them has been nearly intimately acquainted with her knifepoint.

 _Had_.

 _Had_ been nearly intimately acquainted with her knifepoint.

"She's back. But she's different, and she's scared." The look on his face is made up of such obvious pain, she can't stop herself from reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder. He's the only person she can touch, anymore. The only one she even tries to. Attempting it with anyone else causes nothing but pain. "But she's strong. She'll be okay."

"I hope so." She finds herself saying.

Things change, once you die. You stop holding unimportant, proxy grudges against people aligned with those who have hurt you.

It doesn't mean that when Bobbi Morse passes them, as they move through the halls, that she doesn't tense up, that she doesn't feel a wave of anger.

It doesn't mean that when Melinda May shows up, however briefly, she doesn't feel a snarling rage build in the space where her lungs used to be.

It doesn’t mean that the very sight of Phil Coulson could tear her fragile non-existence into nothing with the force of her blind fury.

It doesn't mean that when she stands in that place, on the other side of the country, where Grant lays in bed and chases sleep, she doesn't feel like she could die all over again.

Because she loved him so much, and all she can do for him now is stand by, in the background, and watch him slowly burn out. Slowly but surely propel himself towards an inescapable death at the hands of the people he wants to make hurt.

For _her_.

Once, she thought it was noble, and a labour of love.

Now, when she can't turn off her fear that he's coming back to her sooner, rather than later, she just wants him to stop. She shouldn't. She should want him to avenge her, and she should want him to go out in a blaze, before he comes back to her.

But the time that she's spent, wandering this plane, with Antoine at her side, listening to her rage, and sharing his own stories, has changed her perspective.

More than anything, Kara wants Grant to go back to the house in Mexico. To give this up. To try and live his life, as best as he can, the way they intended. The succulent on the windowsill, and the sunlight coming in the windows.

 _Live_ , because she can't.

She's dead, and he's on a path whose end none of them can truly predict.

Antoine reaches up to squeeze her hand, the one on his shoulder, his gaze on the girl who's changed her name, striding across a hangar bay with a mountain of a man at her side.

"Do you want to go watch the sunrise in Colorado?" He asks.

She smiles. They both know it's a cover, something to focus on so that they can, for however short a moment, forget about the things they're watching their loved ones go through.

"Sure."

The scene before them flickers, and she closes her eyes, trying to let go of everything, for just a few moments.

It hurt to die.

It hurts more to be a ghost.


End file.
